Pakistan's founder owned over 200 suits and never repeated a silk tie
Muhammad Ali Jinnah was famously exacting about appearance. He dressed in heavily starched shirts with detachable collars, took pride as a barrister in never wearing the same silk tie twice, and even while dying refused to travel in pyjamas. The same precision made him a formidable courtroom lawyer long before he led the movement for Pakistan.
Born Mahomedali Jinnahbhai in Karachi, probably on 25 December 1876, he was the eldest of eight children of a merchant from a weaving family. In 1892 a business associate of his father offered him an apprenticeship with a London shipping firm. Once there he quit to study law, angering his father, and joined Lincoln's Inn, later explaining that he had chosen it because Muhammad appeared among the great lawgivers honoured there. He briefly tried acting with a Shakespearean troupe before a stern letter from home ended that, and in 1895, aged 19, became the youngest British Indian ever called to the bar in England.
London also shaped his politics. He absorbed the liberalism of Mill, Bentham and Spencer, and from the visitors' gallery heard the maiden speech of Dadabhai Naoroji, the first MP of Indian descent. Back home he began practising in Bombay at 20 as the city's only Muslim barrister. Briefs were scarce at first, but when offered a steady post at 1,500 rupees a month, he declined, saying he meant to earn that much in a day. Fame followed the 1908 Caucus Case over allegedly rigged Bombay municipal elections. Told by one judge that he was not addressing a third-class magistrate, he reportedly replied that the judge was not addressing a third-class pleader.
In the Indian National Congress he first championed Hindu-Muslim unity, helping shape the 1916 Lucknow Pact, but he quit in 1920 over the civil-disobedience campaign, which he considered anarchic. He also led the 70,000-member All India Postal Staff Union and helped pass the Trade Union Act of 1926.
Heading the All-India Muslim League, he steered the 1940 Lahore Resolution, and when no power-sharing deal could hold British India together, Pakistan became independent on 14 August 1947. As its first governor-general he personally oversaw refugee camps for millions of migrants. He died in September 1948, and Pakistanis honour him as Quaid-e-Azam, the Great Leader.
Source: Muhammad Ali Jinnah
